That means, there’s no longer a .mp4 file. Instead, it’s now a .m3u8 file (aka “Playlist”) that has been chopped up into a number of smaller chunks – aka “segments” – basically multiple, partial pieces of the video, which have the .ts file extension.

On top of that, the stream has been encrypted using industrial-strength AES 128-bit Encryption. Which means, even if someone, somehow manages to download the video segments, and tries to manually put them together, or uses some slick video downloading software like Internet Download Manager (IDM) or a browser extension like VideoDownloader, they won’t be able to play the video.

In the example, it is configured to securely play a MP4 video file that has been securely stored on Amazon S3, delivered through Amazon CloudFront, and the video will only play from this web site. Even if you do a view source of the file and try to grab the direct MP4 URL, that link will not work after 15 minutes from a different computer or device (email it to yourself and try to open the link after 15 minutes – it won’t work).